100 years, 10 questions — everything you wanted to know about Benjamin Britten

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Sarah Connolly and Christopher Maltman in The Rape of LucretiaWilfried Hösl

Various writers

Last updated at 12:01AM, November 4 2013

It’s the British composer’s centenary this month, but how well do you know him? Our panel of experts have the answers

1. How British was Britten?By reacting in his youth against his English predecessors and welcoming
the influence of continental composers — Mahler, Stravinsky, Bartók, Berg —
Britten might appear to be very unBritish. His acceptance all around the
world by audiences who can still remain puzzled by Elgar and Vaughan
Williams would seem to confirm this. Yet British composers have never been
parochial and have always turned to the Continent for inspiration. Britten,
who was firmly attached to his Suffolk birthplace and felt at home nowhere
else, who wrote operas with local settings (in two of which the sea, the
British